Related papers: C60: the first one-component gel?
We report a study of the mode-coupling theory (MCT) glass transition line for the Girifalco model of C60 fullerene. The equilibrium static structure factor of the model, the only required input for the MCT calculations, is provided by…
Colloidal particles with appropriate wetting properties can become very strongly trapped at an interface between two immiscible fluids. We have harnessed this phenomenon to create a new class of soft materials with intriguing and…
Carefully tuned composite materials can have properties wholly unlike their separate constituents. We review the development of one example: colloid-stabilized emulsions with bicontinuous liquid domains. These non-equilibrium structures…
Colloidal gels have unique mechanical and transport properties that stem from their bicontinous nature, in which a colloidal network is intertwined with a viscous solvent, and have found numerous applications in foods, cosmetics,…
We numerically study a simple model for thermo-reversible colloidal gelation in which particles can form reversible bonds with a predefined maximum number of neighbors. We focus on three and four maximally coordinated particles, since in…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
Colloidal gels have strong industrial relevance as they can behave liquid- and solid-like. The latter allows them to support the buoyant weight against gravity. However, the system is intrinsically out-of-equilibrium, which means that the…
We address the interesting temperature range of a glass forming system where the mechanical properties are intermediate between those of a liquid and a solid. We employ an efficient Monte-Carlo method to calculate the elastic moduli, and…
The liquid-liquid phase separation of a binary solvent can be arrested by colloidal particles trapped at the interface [K. Stratford et al., Science 309, 5744 (2005)]. We show experimentally that the colloidal network so formed can remain…
Depending on the temperature, the C70 solid crystallizes in several structures. At high temperature (T > 340K), the ellipsoidal C70 molecule rotates freely in all directions and may be treated as a uniform thick spherical shell with inner…
A molecular solid C$_{50}$Cl$_{10}$ with possible crystalline structures, including the hexagonal-close-packed (hcp) phase, the face-centered cubic (fcc) phase, and a hexagonal monolayer, is predicted in terms of first-principles…
We study a microscopically realistic model of a physical gel and use computer simulations to investigate its static and dynamic properties at thermal equilibrium. The phase diagram comprises a sol phase, a coexistence region ending at a…
Glass-forming liquids have only a modest tendency to crystallize and hence their dynamics can be studied even below the melting temperature. The relaxation dynamics of most of these liquids shows at a temperature $T_c$, somewhat above the…
In polymers melts and supercooled liquids, the glassy dynamics is characterized by the rattling of monomers or particles in the cage formed by their neighbors. Recently, a direct correlation in such systems, described by a universal scaling…
Glass stability (GS) indicates the glass reluctance or ability to crystallise upon heating; it can be characterised by several methods and parameters and is frequently used to retrieve glass-forming ability (GFA) of corresponding liquids as…
We study numerically a monodisperse model of interacting classical particles predicted to exhibit a static liquid-glass transition. Using a dynamical Monte Carlo method we show that the model does not freeze into a glassy phase at low…
We present a confocal-microscopy study of demixing and remixing in binary liquids containing colloidal particles. First, particle-stabilized emulsions have been fabricated by nucleation and growth of droplets upon cooling from the…
The solidity of glassy materials is believed to be due to the cage formed around each particle by its neighbors, but in reality the details of cage-formation remain elusive [1-4]. This cage starts to be formed at the onset…
We report a numerical study, covering a wide range of packing fraction $\phi$ and temperature $T$, for a system of particles interacting via a square well potential supplemented by an additional constraint on the maximum number $n_{\rm…
Despite their technological relevance, a full microscopic understanding of glasses is still lacking. This applies even more to their surfaces whose properties largely differ from that of the bulk material. Here, we experimentally…